Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
songbird wrote:
...
i need a lot more room. 
How many people are you feeding 'Bird?
2 here and 20-40 others at various times,
Wow. That is a lot of people
yes, but most of them get fed maybe once a
month and only a part of that meal comes from
the gardens. we're not a full on CSA or anything
formal like a farm.
not
full production by far as we don't use all the
space available for veggie production. we have
much more space in perennials and a huge area
covered by crushed limestone. perhaps 60-70 sq m
total spread among many different garden patches
and some of them not particularly hard pressed
for production. i don't interplant intensively
and i try different things and some of those
trials are left for the critters or buried to
feed the worms.
You must have a huge harvest.
not really, last year was the worst for the dry
bean and most of the regular veggies, some did ok
but quite a few were trimmed back by the woodchucks
before they made it to productive size. some rotted.
considering how little i did last year it wasn't
any loss to me. my time was well rewarded by the
strawberry patches and the other things i was doing
and growing.
i'd guess our complete harvest last year was
something like:
- 150kg of tomatoes of which i buried 135kg due to rot
- 125kg of strawberries
- 40kg green and red peppers
- 15kg dried beans
- 10kg of green and wax beans
- 10kg rhubarb
- 10kg of beets
- 10kg onions
- 5kg winter wheat
- 5kg winter rye
- 5kg turnips
- 5kg rutabagas
- 2kg garlic
- 1kg peas/pea pods
- 10 squash of various sizes
- 20 fennel bulbs
Wow. Your definiton of what is not a huge harvest and what I think is a
huge harvest are very different. Just your strawberry harvest alone is
huge IMO.
they are by far the easiest and fastest fruit crop
for me here in our soils and climate. that they get
ripe early in the summer is nice too. i have three
patches going and two of those will need some work
this year to refurbish them or to rotate part of them
into other crops. one other patch is just getting
established so it can run for a few years. it will
be interplanted like one of the others (so i'll have
two formal strawberry patches and two intermixed
wandering patches).
i'm hoping the new intermixed garden will work out
as it will include other food plants besides the
strawberries. i like that it really doesn't take much
time for me to work weeding or watering because of the
cover already in place. it's just a matter of getting
small areas cleared for seeds and then seeing what
happens. last year i put turnip and daikon radish
seeds in, the turnips i never harvested many so they
are worm food now under the snow (a few will survive to
flower this coming year). the radishes i ate some of
the sprouts and did not see any plants survive. i
don't know if the critters found and ate all of them or
what, but i don't think any are out there now. the
sprouts and seeds were pretty good.
it was a very off year for many plantings because
of the amount of woodchuck feasting we supported
(often multiple raids). the lettuces and bok choi
never had a chance to grow above a few inches, most
of the peas too. then in the mid summer we had a
lot of rain and not much sunshine. rot set in a
few places.
the beans i'd normally shell out three to four
times what i got (30-40kg).
Do you mean as dry beans for eating or for seed saving?
both as i do plant larger amounts of those we eat a
lot of, but i have to balance that by what i want to
grow and find out with the new crosses i'm discovering.
and i didn't plant
the back old grape trellis with climbers like i
did the year before. i was having a hard time
getting done what i did get done with my hand being
broken.
i may have a lot of bean varieties, but in most
cases i only plant a few rows of some of them and for
the new ones i've only just got them started now. to
grow them out for any quantity would take a huge
amount of space, which i don't have. the main patches
of one variety beans are the pinto beans, lima beans
and some greasy beans on the fence. almost every
single bean plant was eaten by woodchucks once or
twice.
What's a greasy bean? That's not a term I've heard before.
i'd call it a term of art used by the southern folks who
have their own family heirloom varieties of climbing beans.
our own Steve Peek has many more years experience growing
them than i do. i've only put them in the past two years.
they could probably use a little drier climate and longer
for a few more weeks, but i'm still getting a pretty good
harvest for the space they take (i put them on the fence
to the north of the gardens so they don't block any of
the summer sun). about all i see as trouble with them is
the late season when we get rains it will turn any of the
late unripe pods into useless beans with some rot and
discoloration, so i have to pick what is ready and fairly
dry when i can before it gets damaged if we get rains.
i'd put them in the 110-120 day range for a full crop they
could likely go longer as they vine quite tall (well over
my head and come back down). they stand up to our weather
and rains better than the adzuki and blackeyed peas (both
of those seem to need at least that much time here and
most of what i get is discolored or rotten).
to me they are fairly bland with a very very slight fishy
aftertaste. Ma likes them as a white bean. we've not
eaten many at the fresh green stage, but the pods are good
even when the seeds are large, some folks dry them at that
stage for later use (boil 'em with a chunk of fatty meat
for hours to rehydrate and cook). i haven't canned any of
them either.
most of the strawberry harvest i was calling people
to come pick because i had so many that i wasn't able
to keep up.
Hummph. You didn't call me! I'd have caught a plane to get some of
that harvest! The blasted Blue tongue lizards get most of mine and
although I love the lizards, I do think the rotten sods could share with
me.
heh, that's an expensive berry! you'd be welcome
for sure.
we had a lot of raiding this year, but i have so many
plants that they could not get them all. in the interplanted
garden they could not find them very easily either. there
were trails through the patches from both me and the animals
raiding and i still had some that ended up rotting.
we don't have large lizards like that here to contend with.
i like the approach of massively overplanting and hoping it's
enough for everyone. if i were on a smaller area i'd have
to resort to fencing the patch and having some shock to it
too because the chipmunks and birds alone can eat quite a few
berries. i wouldn't mind as much if they'd eat the whole
berry instead of taking one bite out of it and leaving it
laying right next to a half dozen others.
usually i'd pick them and give away
what was extra. i still made 24 liters of freezer jam
(that i gave away the first half because i made it
the same day the small tornado came through the
neighborhood and took the power out -- jam didn't
set right). i think i'll be lucky to get half that
this coming year because of how that back patch has
been treated and taken over by other things.
Well I have to say that I really admire your efforts. You seem to
produce a lot of wonderful produce.
i'd rather garden than do much else for exercise and i
always enjoy trying different things even if they don't
all work out. at least i'm not spraying anything now and
for all my fertilizers it is worm compost or green manure
from that patch. so on the whole, for the amount of inputs
per year spent we get many returns beyond me being happy
out playing in the dirt.
every season is a new adventure that is for sure.
i have to be patient yet, spring won't be here
for a while...
:-)) I've been buying more sugar to get ready for all the fruit glut
that I'm going to have this year - pears, apples, quinces, figs, plums.
is it very expensive there? it's running about $(usd)1.00/kg
here. sometimes we can get it for less. the local grown beet
sugar would be great to use, but it is expensive and not the
same as it was years ago (they're using M*'s GMO technology in
it now).
songbird